She broke off and spun to one side, bringing up the laser pistol in her free hand and shooting past Murchison’s right shoulder. He scarcely caught a glimpse of the station defender who’d come looming up out of the smoke before the man went limp and slowly began to rotate in the air. The needle-gun dropped from his massive fist and floated away into the smoke-filled air of the station corridor.

“So much for the subtle approach,” Anastasia said, and uncoiled from her position. She spoke into the comm-tracker, “One unfriendly down. Moving forward. Do mop up.”

Unfriendly, Murchison thought, and glanced at the fallen stationer. Just a man who was doing his job, and maybe a little bit more than his job, trying to defend his home and workplace.

Anastasia headed on into the next corridor, not bothering with stealth or concealment. She’s going to get herself killed if she keeps that up, Murchison thought, then turned his attention to the man now floating motionless a few feet above the deckplates.

He propelled himself forward as he had before, medical bag first. Somebody up ahead still had a laser-pistol, and Murchison—unlike Anastasia Kerensky—didn’t want to make himself into more of a target than he already was.

“Medic,” he said to the injured stationer, pulling on latex examination gloves as he spoke. The man didn’t respond, but Murchison could see that he was breathing.

“Where does it hurt?” Murchison asked. This time he got a groan in reply.

He ran his hands down the man’s body, checking for damage, and found some in the front of the right chest. Antibiotics, he thought. Painkillers, muscle relaxants. He didn’t have a lot of any of those with him, so he would stabilize the man with what he did have, then catch up with Anastasia Kerensky once he was done. The Galaxy Commander had, after all, expressed a preference for taking the station with its crew intact.

Murchison cut away the wounded man’s shirt, exposing a cauterized hole that whistled air every time the man breathed. The man’s blue lips, gasping breath, and thready pulse confirmed Murchison’s suspicions—sucking chest wound, possible tension pneumothorax. He pulled out a one-way seal from the collection of bandages in his medic bag, and had just finished slapping it onto the injury when a backup squad of Steel Wolf infantry arrived, armor clanking as they propelled themselves forward in the zero-gee environment.

“They have laser-pistols,” he said to the Warrior in the lead, a burly Star Colonel whose name he couldn’t recall at the moment. “And needle-guns. The Galaxy Commander went through that door there. I’d hurry after her if I were you.”

“One man to guard the prisoner, and everyone else follow me,” the Star Colonel said. “You, medic. Come with us.”

Murchison passed through the same door Anastasia had done, and—like the Colonel and the rest of the backup squad—made his way to Station Control by following the sound of fighting. Their haste turned out to be unnecessary; by the time they arrived, the noise of gunfire had abated and the stationers in Control were either dead or had surrendered.

“Star Colonel Dorn,” Anastasia said when the backup force arrived in the bridge area, even as Murchison started working on the nearest injured man, “take possession of the station. Commence recharge and refueling of our ships as soon as possible.”

For a moment Dorn did not answer. Then Murchison saw him square his shoulders. “You and I have business to transact first, Galaxy Commander.”

Anastasia twisted to face him and raised her eyebrows, balancing her hand laser lightly in one hand. “Business of what sort, Star Colonel?”

“I have a grievance against you, Galaxy Commander,” the Star Colonel said. “You have unnecessarily put at risk the JumpShip Akela and its crew—”

“Do you speak of our ruse with the solar sail?”

“Yes,” said Dorn. “Had it failed, you would have thrown away the lives of valuable Warriors for the sake of a bad idea—just as you did on Northwind, for the sake of a useless castle you could not even keep.”

Saffel Space Station Three

Saffel System

Prefecture II

February 3134

Anastasia Kerensky looked Star Colonel Dorn up and down. The laser-pistol in her right hand made a tempting weight, and she had to fight the urge to raise it and fire.

“That is not a grievance, Star Colonel,” she said, keeping her voice deliberately calm and scornful. “That is a pretext. I have taken Northwind, I have taken this station, I will take Terra and bring the Clans back to their rightful home. This is neither the time for a Trial, nor the place.”

“Are you afraid?” he demanded.

She laughed. “No—and I am not stupid, either. You do not goad me into foolishness as I goaded Kal Radick.”

“It does not matter. You cannot refuse a Trial.”

“Nothing impels me to it except my own will,” she said. “I do as I please, and it pleases me to accept. But not here and not now, while the station remains partially unsecured and the JumpShip is not yet docked for recharging.”

“How long—”

“Tomorrow noon,” she said. Despite her bravado, she knew that Dorn—damn his eyes!—was right. She could not refuse, and a long delay would be as bad as a refusal. “The choice of place is yours.”

“Before the Star Colonels assembled,” Dorn said. The gleam of triumph in his eyes vanished as quickly as it had come, but Anastasia found it worrisome nonetheless. It confirmed her suspicion that this confrontation had been planned out in advance. “In the crew recreation area on the station’s gravity deck. Clear everything out, and we will have room enough to make the ring. Since we are in space, it will have to be unaugmented—as you fought Kal Radick.”

Yes, Anastasia thought, but Kal Radick was a stupid man. While you… are also a stupid man, which means that somebody else wrote out this script and tutored you in your lines. And if I live through tomorrow, I will find out who.

“So let it be done, then,” she said, and met Dorn’s gaze straight on. “Seylah.”

The Warriors in the control room echoed her. “Seylah.”

She drew a deep breath. “In the meantime, Star Colonel, you have your orders. Take possession of the station and commence recharge and refueling.”

Noon the next day came sooner than Anastasia would have liked. She dressed for the occasion with some care, braiding her hair tightly and securing it close against her head with pins, so as not to give her adversary anything to grab. It would have been even safer, she knew, to cut it all off—many MechWarriors did, as a matter of convenience, and even the little Countess of Northwind had kept her blond hair clipped short—but to herself at least Anastasia would admit to being vain enough to keep her own hair long.

She selected her clothing with similar care: snug-fitting black tights and black soft-sided combat practice shoes, topped with a red silk scarf worn halterwise and knotted beneath her breasts. When she was dressed, she summoned Ian Murchison from his quarters—telling herself that if she intended to continue her project of making a Wolf Clansman out of a Northwind medic, a Trial of Grievance would be an educational experience for him—and went down to the crew recreation area on the station’s spinning gravity deck.

The rec area had been cleared out completely during the night, and now only held a circle of Star Colonels in their dress uniforms—except for Dorn, who had chosen to fight in a loose-fitting tunic and trousers combo, with soft shoes laced high—and a throng of spectators. She wondered briefly whether some enterprising technician had managed to rig the area’s security cameras for a live feed to the rest of the station, then decided that she didn’t need to know.